Just Look Already!

Alma continues to teach the people about faith. Earlier, he compared it to a seed that will grow when planted (if it is a good seed, anyway).

He shares another example of faith from the scriptures. When Moses and the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness, they had an experience. Some fiery serpent ended up coming and biting them, and Moses was instructed to raise up a staff with a serpent on it, and everyone that looked at the staff would be healed. There is something that has always bugged me about this story. I don’t understand how anyone in that situation would rather die than just look at a staff. I mean, are they out anything if they’re not healed? No. Anyway, Alma hits the nail on the head as he teaches this story. Their hearts were too hard to even do that much. And he poses the question asking if there was any way a sane, rational person wouldn’t just look.

“O my brethren, if ye could be healed by merely casting about your eyes that ye might be healed, would ye not behold quickly, or would ye rather harden your hearts in unbelief, and be slothful, that ye would not cast about your eyes, that ye might perish?” (Alma 33:21)

And so we are in life sometimes. In general, we’re pretty good, but a lot of us can kind of get to the point where we’re not even doing simple things on the off chance they improve our lives. Things like regular scripture study and saying prayers.  Sometimes we just need to get old, bad habits out of the way and take action. Faith is all about action. You can believe all day long but if you never do anything about it, you’ll never get the blessings. I have experienced this before. I want to believe, but I am just not in the mindset to make whatever the effort is that is being required of me. I don’t look at the serpent raised up on the staff, even though it is easy. I think that’s where I start: just turn my head and look.